Quicksilver Messages

Quicksilver aka liquid Mercury

Starring

Blossoms, CMAT, Emma Jean Thackray, Jacob Alon, Nick Mulvey, Paul Weller, Wolf Alice

The Mercury Music Prize Special

The 2025 Mercury Music Prize shortlist has been announced, and Lauren Laverne (or someone like her) announces the winner on 16th October. English Teacher were very worthy winners last year. Which of these lucky acts will it be this year?

CMAT: ‘Euro-Country’

Emma-Jean Thackray: ‘Weirdo’

FKA twigs: ‘EUSEXUA’

Fontaines D.C.: ‘Romance’

Jacob Alon: ‘In Limerence’

Joe Webb: ‘Hamstrings & Hurricanes’

Martin Carthy: ‘Transform Me Then Into A Fish’

Pa Salieu: ‘Afrikan Alien’

PinkPantheress: ‘Fancy That’

Pulp: ‘More’

Sam Fender: ‘People Watching’

Wolf Alice: ‘The Clearing’

This week’s blog is a little different. It looks at some of this year’s shortlist and the latest albums from previous nominees, starting with a two time nominee, Paul Weller, who was nominated in 1994 for ‘Wild Wood’ and 2010 for ‘Wake Up The Nation’.

The Contenders

EURO-COUNTRY : CMAT

This is CMAT’s moment. She should be shouting about this album because everyone should want to hear it. It’s hard to imagine a better pop record.She’s the act every festival and venue wants, and the act that every pop radio presenter or TV music programme slavers over having on the problem. It’s only if you’re too cool for school that you’d dismiss that something this popular could ever count in the reckoning of the best albums of the year, decade or millennium.

You’d be wrong. I admit that there’s a little, bewildered voice in my head asking how this can be so good, but it is. This is a consummate pop record with attitude in every part of it, and it approaches perfection in pop technique. It’s laced with humour that’s genuinely funny and not just smart. I’d read her lyrics like a book. They have so many great lines. “I see, it hurts, I see, iceberg”  (’Iceberg’) is sublime when sung.

She’s described herself as a country singer and there are country influences  in the  guitar work. It’s as complete a picture though as describing the Rolling Stones as a blues band around the time of  ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’. It’s true, but it’s only 20% of what makes them magical. This is an Irish record too. I love the Irish lyrics and brogue to ‘Euro-Country’ and thank Saint Patrick that here’s an Irish record that hasn’t come from the Riverdance bucket. Again, though, its Irishness won’t define the record.

CMAT’s vocals swoop, soar and demand to be heard. She has a skill for writing one crowd pleaser after another and an exhilarating sense that there’s no turning back now.

There’s something else too. Her songs may be pop classics but they have an intensity of feeling that comes wrapped up in shiny, tin foil wrapping paper. The anticipation you’ll feel for each new song is as if you were a five year old as the presents start to be handed out on Christmas morning.

Prospects? I hope it wins. It’s a statement album showing the potential of pop to be exciting, sassy, and relevant. CMAT has raised the bar to inspire others to reach for it.

Taster Track : Iceberg

Weirdo : Emma-Jean Thackray

It’s easy to see and hear why this has been nominated for the 2025 Mercury Music Prize. It’s born out of devastating loss but, musically, it sounds as life affirming as being given the all clear following a cancer treatment.

Emma-Jean Thackray lost her long term partner unexpectedly to natural causes. In black and white those words can’t summon the emotional devastation wreckage that ensues. She turned to music for recovery, but for much of this, there’s a sense of further trauma waiting to explode from behind a forced smile. The song titles don’t shirk from this reality. They include ‘Save Me’, ‘Wanna Die’, ‘What Is the Point’ and ‘Please Leave Me Alone’. The scene is set for the bleakest, most painful of records.

It never arrives. This is music not just to lose yourself in, but to find yourself in too. Some desperation creeps in but it can’t overwhelm the music. Above all this album is testimony to what music can achieve, a slap in the face for anyone who sniffs at ‘mere’ pop.

Take the opening track ‘Weirdo’. It’s a tangled jumble of styles in a single song - jazz, rock, pop, soul, funk, world, gospel. From the off it’s strikingly different. ‘Stay’ builds impressively into something that is almost celebratory. ‘Let Me Sleep’ is just one example of a song that is richly satisfying. ‘Maybe Nowhere’ is stretched out until it becomes hypnotic and transformative. The lyrically bleak ‘Wanna Die’ is redeemed by its sheer energy. The gospel elements are heard most clearly and beautifully in ‘Thank You For The Day’ and the trumpet in ‘Remedy’ is simply gorgeous.

Emma-Jean has acknowledged the influence of Parliament / Funkadelic’s George Clinton on her music. The jazz funk vibes of this album share his powerful individuality. She’s in a line drawn down from Prince too, but her songs are tougher, more personal. Vocally her voice is full of character, laced with a few, loose jazz vibes and the down to earth tones of Arlo Parks.

Prospects for winning in October? Very good. Success would be fully deserved.

Taste Track : Stay

In Limerence : Jacob Alon

In shortlisting Jacob Alon for the Mercury Prize, the judges have selected a deserving Mercury Prize type of record. He’s destined to be a long term critic’s darling with a passionate following of fans.

He’s more than capable of gorgeous songs, such as ‘Of Amber’, ‘Don’t Fall Asleep’ and ‘Glimmer’. They align gentle melodies with perfectly formed guitar and sweet, occasionally surprising vocals. Just try the sudden, unexpected rise into the falsetto of ‘Of Amber’. It’s reminiscent of Conor O’Brien’s Villagers. ‘I Couldn’t Feed Her’ is good, old fashioned folk pop. Make that timeless, a future classic in the making. His voice draws you in, lending a feeling of significance to the songs. You sense that a solo performance with just voice and guitar would be mesmerising.

You also sense, though, that’s not enough for Jacob. Before too long his songs darken with the intensity of  Damien Rice. In ‘Confession’ and ‘Elijah’ it comes at the expense of those gorgeous melodies leaving an impression of withdrawal into his own thoughts and pushing away the listener. His songs move from loving address to a quiet self recrimination. His suffering seeps through in a song such as ‘Zathura’. He doesn’t want comfort and offers a shrug of the musical shoulder to those who would offer it.  On ‘August Moon’ he goes too far and some may not want to venture from the warm shallows of the opening tracks into the wild water struggles that follow.

That’s not all. He wants more. He wants his music to challenge in a way that pure pop is unable to do. In this respect he is like Bon Iver. The ambient conversations of ‘Home Tapes’ takes us into dream territory and demands thought and interpretation. It’s like going to a book reading and expecting Nick Hornby when it’s Umberto Eco who stands in front of you.

It’s a very good album, fully deserving of being shortlisted. In football terms you’d back it for a place in the Champion’s League, but you’d be less certain of it carrying away the main prize.

Taster Track : Of Amber

The Clearing : Wolf Alice

Wolf Alice is the only band to have had their first four albums shortlisted for the Mercury Prize, winning in 2018 with ‘Visions of a Life”. Before releasing ‘The Clearing’, the band promised something very different that would wrongfoot many of their fans. They’re right, but I suspect that not many people saw that statement as heralding a retreat to something more mainstream, something safer.

They’ve managed it very well. ‘Thorns’ opens the album. It’s a big song crammed with melody and a big chorus with nothing too far out there. They’re everywhere in this album - ‘Safe In The World’ and ‘White Horses’ are two more that stand out. Strings spiral upwards, carrying songs like ‘The Sofa’ to new heights. ‘Bloom Baby Bloom’ is certainly rockier and poppier than before, suiting the image of Ellie Rowsell on the cover. There’s a hint of Taylor Swift in the mix too. They’re the kind of songs that arena filling, on trend superstars will be flocking to cover. 

Idle speculation might come up with a theory about this album based on this line from ‘White Horses’:

“Know who I am, that’s important to me

They sound like a band consumed by the music industry, too divorced from the real world. They’ve not had time to be ordinary people over the last 15 years, recording and touring in a bubble. The line above feels as if it’s sung by Ellie Rowsell as a cry for help, face pressed against the sealed windows of the tour bus.

You couldn’t mistake Wolf Alice, as an alternative indie band any more. You hear a complaining protest when they sing : 

I wanna age with excitеment, feel my world expand

Go grey and feel delighted, don’t just look sexy on a man (Play It Out)

They’re now a band that has to explain to American listeners where to find Seven Sisters in London. If they were to die, they’d have a tombstone not a gravestone. It doesn't feel right. If you played ‘Just Two Girls’ would it be recognised as Wolf Alice, or would it seem like just another slice of big business pop?

The fact that the songs are so well done, so likeable and delivered with such a high level of professional commitment makes this a puzzling album.

How will it fare with the judges? It’s hard to say. If they’re looking for an album with a formula for success, it may be in pole position to win. It would be a disappointment though if an album that seems to play it safe were deemed the best album of the year.

Taster Track : Thorns

The Old Hands

Gary : Blossoms

With an album named after an eight foot tall fibreglass gorilla stolen from a Scottish garden centre, Blossoms seem more concerned with a vaguely amusing story than the weighty issues of the world. Sadly, that’s also the case with their music.

This is competent and amiable indie pop, nicely played and sung and polished to ensure that there are no rough edges left. It has the feel of lightweight U.S. college radio to the extent that you suspect they may be more concerned with the weekly Billboard charts than the UK Top 40.

The tragic thing about them is that they were once the next big thing. Listed as one of the BBC’s Sounds of 2016, they were Mercury Prize nominees the following year for their self-titled debut. The Stone Roses’ Ian Brown proclaimed himself a fan. But from that first bloom, these blossoms have faded to become a safe prospect - more McFly than Arctic Monkeys. They feel unfulfilled as if they hit the motorway with engine revving, only to find a self imposed 40mph speed limit in place.

Taken en masse, this doesn’t stick long in the memory. They can now be grouped with bands such as The Feeling, The Rifles and Scouting For Girls, well worth four minutes of anybody’s time but never deserving a life long allegiance. The title track ‘Gary’ is typical - poppy but inconsequential. ‘I Like Your Look’ borrows a slice of pop funk that sounds like post peak, commercially aware Level 42 or Human League. ‘Why Do I Give You The Worst Of Me?’ earns the Taster Track spot because something in it dragged me back from a different place I’d wandered to in my mind.

From contenders for best in the Chelsea Flower Show, Blossoms are heading at speed towards a bouquet bucket on a petrol station forecourt. Shame!

Taster Track : Why Do I Give You The Worst Of Me?

Dark Harvest Pt 1 : Nick Mulvey

Nick Mulvey was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize for ‘First Mind’ in 2014. Over the next eleven years he’s perfected an approach to music that is sublimely positive and beautifully melodic.

There’s a danger when writing about Mulvey that the focus shifts away from music to his positive mindset. He can seem to pitch wellbeing and, particularly here, acceptance of self and situations in his song. Rather than be put off, people should flock to him. He’s not shy to position himself in a corner that he feels is important. If that means that he is seen as the nicest, most affirming and accepting man in pop, well, that’s what his music is all about.

The plucked guitar, the comfort and confidence he feels in his pauses, his slightly tremulous vocals and the hymn-like quality of his songs -  he’s special. His songs have some of the warmest melodies you’ll hear anywhere. They’re beautiful and emotional, celebratory and overflowing with good feelings. His voice is a little more worn than before. Singing your heart out in the quiet euphoria of songs such as ‘Holy Days’ must take its toll. And he loves language, seeming almost to speak in tongues during the flow, sound and tumbling force of ‘Nothing Lasts Forever’.

On this album his songs undergo a baptism into a more sombre tone towards the end. He covers Annie Lennox’s sad desperation in ‘No More “I Love Yous”’ beautifully, making it as moving as you can imagine it could be. He constantly finds beauty in the darkest moments.

Mulvey comes across as from the same world as Jose Gonzalez , but more prepared to admit happiness. He takes an appreciation of how to incorporate world music elements from Peter Gabriel, but wraps them up in much better, life-affirming melodies.

Nick Mulvey writes songs to cherish. Dark Harvest Pt 2 is out in October.

Taster Track : Solastalgia

Find El Dorado : Paul Weller

When an artist releases a covers album, it can mean one of two things. First, they’re on the way down and their record company is desperate for a set of songs that might actually interest fans and sell. Secondly, they may be secure in their reputation and it’s of genuine interest to hear and understand the kind of music influencing them now. Fortunately Weller is in that latter category, and Find El-Dorado confirms his status as an elder statesman of rock.

His selection of songs is a crate digger's gift. I’d not heard of some of the artists before, let alone their songs. That’s not too surprising. These are songs drawn mainly from the 60s and 70s before we’d even heard of Paul Weller. Bobby Charles’ ‘Small Town Talk’ , for example, is taken from his self titled album described as an obscure classic. 

The benefit of this is that the selection feels personal and sincere. It’s largely and surprisingly weighted towards folk, folk rock and country with a smattering of the blues for good measure. Even the MOR pop of White Plains’ ‘When You Are A King’ is brought into line, to surprisingly good effect.

In tone, it’s reminiscent of Weller’s own ‘Wild Wood’ or ‘English Rose’. Little rocks, and much is pensive. It’s a labour of love that feels completely sincere, if a little subdued in its generally stripped back, sparse treatments. ‘Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fire’ is a little livelier. It could have been an embryonic style template for the Style Council, although there’s no Mick Talbot style boogie woogie to be heard

The only flaw in this collection is one that infects any passionate music nerd. If you don’t share the passion you may feel that enough is enough quite a while before the end. You may appreciate that sharing is caring but that oversharing can feel a little impatient, even awkward.

For everyone else, it’s enough to hear Weller playing the kind of music he enjoys listening to and performing.

Taster Track : Small Town Talk

Final Thoughts

That’s our partial Mercury roundup. It’s a strong list. Pulp are also nominated. Their return was worth waiting for, but to win with ‘More’ would seem like a lifetime achievement award rather than an accolade for 2025’s best record. Jazz, folk, rap, classic rock - all the usual Mercury loved categories can field strong contenders.

Based on what I’ve heard, and if you marched me to the bookies and paid for me to bet on the winner, your money would go on Emma-Jean Thackray’s ‘Weirdo’. We’ll find out  the result on 16th October.

As ever this week's Taster Track playlists can be accessed at https://open.spotify.com/playlist/42qDXrw3nLMlCSg45kCnRy?si=4499207642034207 or via the Spotify link on the Home Page.

The link to the Youtube playlist is https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwV-OogHy7EjHZr5_M3m0Zn5LEu_F3fMm&si=OhQF-ZPaBjUn4VMT